oscarthegrouch wrote:In terms of lay prestige, all of the Ivy, except for Penn State, beat out Chicago. Who cares though, because the prestige factor will mainly just matter for biglaw. If you don't land a job out of OCI, where the employers do know about Chicago's prestige, you are fucked anyway, and that's the entire point of going to Chicago (to land biglaw), AM I RITE?

I did some limited field study/market research on this. Among lay persons, any ivy degree is more impressive than any non-ivy degree (except MD). It doesn't even have to be law degrees. Lay persons are sold more on the ivy name brand than the substance of the degree or the area of study. It is simply enough that a person was able to attend an ivy, because they are really that selective. But for all non-ivy schools, you have to know the school to know the quality. Who knows the quality difference between U of Chicago and U of DC if you are not in the industry? To the lay person, state schools are for everyone in the state, and ivies are for elites.

r6_philly wrote:I did some limited field study/market research on this. Among lay persons, any ivy degree is more impressive than any non-ivy degree (except MD). It doesn't even have to be law degrees. Lay persons are sold more on the ivy name brand than the substance of the degree or the area of study. It is simply enough that a person was able to attend an ivy, because they are really that selective. But for all non-ivy schools, you have to know the school to know the quality. Who knows the quality difference between U of Chicago and U of DC if you are not in the industry? To the lay person, state schools are for everyone in the state, and ivies are for elites.

U-Chi isn't a state school...

Also, I have a tough time buying that a school like Penn is more impressive to lay people than Stanford/MIT/Duke/etc. Of course, if you ask "What's more impressive: an ivy degree or non-ivy degree?" people are going to say the Ivy, but that's not exactly a fair question since it lumps the non-Ivy elites right alongside the Cooleys of the world.

Last edited by AngryAvocado on Wed Jul 28, 2010 10:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

r6_philly wrote:I did some limited field study/market research on this. Among lay persons, any ivy degree is more impressive than any non-ivy degree (except MD). It doesn't even have to be law degrees. Lay persons are sold more on the ivy name brand than the substance of the degree or the area of study. It is simply enough that a person was able to attend an ivy, because they are really that selective. But for all non-ivy schools, you have to know the school to know the quality. Who knows the quality difference between U of Chicago and U of DC if you are not in the industry? To the lay person, state schools are for everyone in the state, and ivies are for elites.

U-Chi isn't a state school...

No, but a surprising number of lay people (like the one above, clearly) think anything with a "university of ____(city or state here___" for a name is a state school. I've heard plenty of people refer to Boston University as a state school, even "smart" people from the area.

r6_philly wrote:I did some limited field study/market research on this. Among lay persons, any ivy degree is more impressive than any non-ivy degree (except MD). It doesn't even have to be law degrees. Lay persons are sold more on the ivy name brand than the substance of the degree or the area of study. It is simply enough that a person was able to attend an ivy, because they are really that selective. But for all non-ivy schools, you have to know the school to know the quality. Who knows the quality difference between U of Chicago and U of DC if you are not in the industry? To the lay person, state schools are for everyone in the state, and ivies are for elites.

U-Chi isn't a state school...

No, but a surprising number of lay people (like the one above, clearly) think anything with a "university of ____(city or state here___" for a name is a state school. I've heard plenty of people refer to Boston University as a state school, even "smart" people from the area.

r6_philly wrote:I did some limited field study/market research on this. Among lay persons, any ivy degree is more impressive than any non-ivy degree (except MD). It doesn't even have to be law degrees. Lay persons are sold more on the ivy name brand than the substance of the degree or the area of study. It is simply enough that a person was able to attend an ivy, because they are really that selective. But for all non-ivy schools, you have to know the school to know the quality. Who knows the quality difference between U of Chicago and U of DC if you are not in the industry? To the lay person, state schools are for everyone in the state, and ivies are for elites.

U-Chi isn't a state school...

No, but a surprising number of lay people (like the one above, clearly) think anything with a "university of ____(city or state here___" for a name is a state school. I've heard plenty of people refer to Boston University as a state school, even "smart" people from the area.

Also, I have a tough time buying that a school like Penn is more impressive to lay people than Stanford/MIT/Duke/etc. Of course, if you ask "What's more impressive: an ivy degree or non-ivy degree?" people are going to say the Ivy, but that's not exactly a fair question since it lumps the non-Ivy elites right alongside the Cooleys of the world.

I know Chicago isn't a state school, but the lay person may not.

People don't know much about Stanford on the East Coast. I known people who hold Stanford in the same light as Berkeley, which is a state school. MIT is only known (to lay person) for geeks. Don't get me wrong, I am one, and it has always been my dream school, but it isn't really impressive to lay persons - smart geeks != money or coolness. Duke ... what? Not a lot of people here knows/cares/thinks about Duke.

Maybe because I am in the heart of Ivy country... I am just reporting what I gathered.

All of these lay person viewpoints are coming from a far East Coast perspective.

Coming from a west coast/California perspective, lay people don't even know most of the Ivy League. When you say Penn, they think you are referring to Penn State. Darthmouth? isn't that a type of snake? Columbia... that is where Spiderman got his powers. Cornell... that is where Andy from The Office went, so it must not be that great of a school because he is working at Dunder-Mifflin. Yale, Harvard, and Princeton are about the only Ivy League schools people consistently know.

As for Non-Ivy elite schools' California lay perception:NYU is where Spike Lee went and they are famous for having a film school not quite as good as USC's-- but closer than anything besides UCLA.Chicago is a city with a crappy basketball team, batman, and lots of wind, not a school.Michigan used to have great football team and must have lax academic standards to attract all of those football players.Wasn't there some type of shooting at the University of Virginia by some Asian guy or something?Duke IS college basketball and have their blue caps recycled by the crips in east LA.MIT is where smart nerdy people attend and is probably the best East Coast school besides Harvard and Yale.Northwestern is in the Big 10 I think.Georgetown has to have one of the best law school in the country.Stanford is better than any other school nationally besides Harvard.

TaipeiMort wrote:All of these lay person viewpoints are coming from a far East Coast perspective.

Coming from a west coast/California perspective, lay people don't even know most of the Ivy League. When you say Penn, they think you are referring to Penn State. Darthmouth? isn't that a type of snake? Columbia... that is where Spiderman got his powers. Cornell... that is where Andy from The Office went, so it must not be that great of a school because he is working at Dunder-Mifflin. Yale, Harvard, and Princeton are about the only Ivy League schools people consistently know.

As for Non-Ivy elite schools' California lay perception:NYU is where Spike Lee went and they are famous for having a film school not quite as good as USC's-- but closer than anything besides UCLA.Chicago is a city with a crappy basketball team, batman, and lots of wind, not a school.Michigan used to have great football team and must have lax academic standards to attract all of those football players.Wasn't there some type of shooting at the University of Virginia by some Asian guy or something?Duke IS college basketball and have their blue caps recycled by the crips in east LA.MIT is where smart nerdy people attend and is probably the best East Coast school besides Harvard and Yale.Northwestern is in the Big 10 I think.Georgetown has to have one of the best law school in the country.Stanford is better than any other school nationally besides Harvard.

TaipeiMort wrote:All of these lay person viewpoints are coming from a far East Coast perspective.

Coming from a west coast/California perspective, lay people don't even know most of the Ivy League. When you say Penn, they think you are referring to Penn State. Darthmouth? isn't that a type of snake? Columbia... that is where Spiderman got his powers. Cornell... that is where Andy from The Office went, so it must not be that great of a school because he is working at Dunder-Mifflin. Yale, Harvard, and Princeton are about the only Ivy League schools people consistently know.

As for Non-Ivy elite schools' California lay perception:NYU is where Spike Lee went and they are famous for having a film school not quite as good as USC's-- but closer than anything besides UCLA.Chicago is a city with a crappy basketball team, batman, and lots of wind, not a school.Michigan used to have great football team and must have lax academic standards to attract all of those football players.Wasn't there some type of shooting at the University of Virginia by some Asian guy or something?Duke IS college basketball and have their blue caps recycled by the crips in east LA.MIT is where smart nerdy people attend and is probably the best East Coast school besides Harvard and Yale.Northwestern is in the Big 10 I think.Georgetown has to have one of the best law school in the country.Stanford is better than any other school nationally besides Harvard.

TaipeiMort wrote:All of these lay person viewpoints are coming from a far East Coast perspective.

Coming from a west coast/California perspective, lay people don't even know most of the Ivy League. When you say Penn, they think you are referring to Penn State. Darthmouth? isn't that a type of snake? Columbia... that is where Spiderman got his powers. Cornell... that is where Andy from The Office went, so it must not be that great of a school because he is working at Dunder-Mifflin. Yale, Harvard, and Princeton are about the only Ivy League schools people consistently know.

As for Non-Ivy elite schools' California lay perception:NYU is where Spike Lee went and they are famous for having a film school not quite as good as USC's-- but closer than anything besides UCLA.Chicago is a city with a crappy basketball team, batman, and lots of wind, not a school.Michigan used to have great football team and must have lax academic standards to attract all of those football players.Wasn't there some type of shooting at the University of Virginia by some Asian guy or something?Duke IS college basketball and have their blue caps recycled by the crips in east LA.MIT is where smart nerdy people attend and is probably the best East Coast school besides Harvard and Yale.Northwestern is in the Big 10 I think.Georgetown has to have one of the best law school in the country.Stanford is better than any other school nationally besides Harvard.

This is really really accurate.

Yeah, as another west coaster, I can say this list's pretty accurate.

i dunno; from what i've seen, people think georgetown, duke, cornell, and columbia are top schools.

TaipeiMort wrote:All of these lay person viewpoints are coming from a far East Coast perspective.

Coming from a west coast/California perspective, lay people don't even know most of the Ivy League. When you say Penn, they think you are referring to Penn State. Darthmouth? isn't that a type of snake? Columbia... that is where Spiderman got his powers. Cornell... that is where Andy from The Office went, so it must not be that great of a school because he is working at Dunder-Mifflin. Yale, Harvard, and Princeton are about the only Ivy League schools people consistently know.

As for Non-Ivy elite schools' California lay perception:NYU is where Spike Lee went and they are famous for having a film school not quite as good as USC's-- but closer than anything besides UCLA.Chicago is a city with a crappy basketball team, batman, and lots of wind, not a school.Michigan used to have great football team and must have lax academic standards to attract all of those football players.Wasn't there some type of shooting at the University of Virginia by some Asian guy or something?Duke IS college basketball and have their blue caps recycled by the crips in east LA.MIT is where smart nerdy people attend and is probably the best East Coast school besides Harvard and Yale.Northwestern is in the Big 10 I think.Georgetown has to have one of the best law school in the country.Stanford is better than any other school nationally besides Harvard.

CapHillLove wrote:Maybe my question doesn't have a good answer and that's why it was ignored... but I'll try one more time:

Someone mentioned DoJ, but can anyone expand on Chicago's reputation in D.C. among non-profit, government and other public interest employers? Is it basically a "go to the best-ranked school you get into" thing or do some schools in the top 10 have better public service reps than others?

I know the PI issue has been discussed and that NYU and Boalt seem to be pretty know for it, but what about Chicago? Does its reputation as a conservative school apply to the law school and does that affect job prospects and liberal-leaning orgs?

In doing a lot of reseach into law schools before deciding on Chicago, I've never heard anyone refer to Chicago as being conservative-- unless having a few conservative faculty members and come conservative students qualifies you as conservative (by this token Stanford would also be "conservative"). Maybe Chicago would be more ideologically balanced than Berkeley or NYU?

However, I've heard that because of Chicago's not-quite-as-good LRAP in comparison with NYU, Berkeley, and others, as well as historically trending to place into academia, clerkships, and BigLaw, but not as much into PI, it is not associated with PI in the minds of many.

This doesn't mean that going to Chicago would stop you from getting a PI job.

Desert Fox wrote:I've noticed people from the Northeast have a huge anti-state school bias. Are your state schools there terrible or something?

They aren't terrible, but we don't have any elite state schools and we have many good private schools (may be some relationship there). People who grow up comparing Umass and Uconn to Harvard and Yale can be that way.

TaipeiMort wrote:All of these lay person viewpoints are coming from a far East Coast perspective.

Coming from a west coast/California perspective, lay people don't even know most of the Ivy League. When you say Penn, they think you are referring to Penn State. Darthmouth? isn't that a type of snake? Columbia... that is where Spiderman got his powers. Cornell... that is where Andy from The Office went, so it must not be that great of a school because he is working at Dunder-Mifflin. Yale, Harvard, and Princeton are about the only Ivy League schools people consistently know.

As for Non-Ivy elite schools' California lay perception:NYU is where Spike Lee went and they are famous for having a film school not quite as good as USC's-- but closer than anything besides UCLA.Chicago is a city with a crappy basketball team, batman, and lots of wind, not a school.Michigan used to have great football team and must have lax academic standards to attract all of those football players.Wasn't there some type of shooting at the University of Virginia by some Asian guy or something?Duke IS college basketball and have their blue caps recycled by the crips in east LA.MIT is where smart nerdy people attend and is probably the best East Coast school besides Harvard and Yale.Northwestern is in the Big 10 I think.Georgetown has to have one of the best law school in the country.Stanford is better than any other school nationally besides Harvard.

Desert Fox wrote:I've noticed people from the Northeast have a huge anti-state school bias. Are your state schools there terrible or something?

Penn state is known for anything but it's academics around here. The fact that they have satellite campuses that is not selective doesn't help either. Pretty much anyone can go to Penn State. It isn't bad, but it isn't "impressive" because of the lack of selectivity. People think ivies are elites because they are hard to get into, and harder to pay for.